Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:
Framingham Heart Study to Add Genetic Link
A research study to pinpoint genes associated with cardiovascular and other chronic diseases is being launched by the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and Boston University School of Medicine.
The Framingham Genetic Research Study, which will be part of the long-running Framingham Heart Study, will involve up to 500,000 genetic analyses of the DNA of 9,000 people across three generations.
The project will lead to the development of a database that will be made available at no cost to researchers around the world so that they can search for links between genes and diseases.
"This important study will take genetic research in the Framingham study to the next level -- accelerating discoveries on the causes, prevention, and treatment of major chronic diseases," Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, NHLBI director, said in a prepared statement.
Since 1948, the Framingham Heart Study has tracked the health of many of the residents of Framingham, Mass.
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Human Brain May be Hard-Wired for Grammar
Grammar may actually be hard-wired into the human brain, suggests a University of Rochester study in this week's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The three-year study involved three young men in Nicaragua who've been completely deaf since birth. The men had no exposure to written Spanish in school, had no formal sign language training, and had never had contact with another person who used sign language. Even so, the men developed their own unique form of gesture communication, CBC News reported.
This improvised language used the same basic rules of grammar as other languages, including the grammatical concept of a "subject."
"Our findings suggest that certain fundamental characteristics of human language systems appear in gestural communication, even when the user has never been exposed to linguistic input and has not descended from previous generations of skilled communicative partners," noted researcher Elissa Newport, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and linguistics.
As part of the study, the young men watched 66 short videos of actions -- such as a woman walking -- and then used their sign language to describe what they had seen, CBC News reported.
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U.S. Sleeping Pill Use Growing Rapidly
About 42 million prescriptions for sleeping pills were filled in the United States in 2005, an increase of almost 60 percent since 2000, according to research company IMS Health.
This huge increase worries some experts, who say sleeping pills are being overused without regard to potential problems associated with long-term use or known side effects such as sleep walking and short-term amnesia, The New York Times reported.
There's also concern that prescribing doctors may be ignoring depression and other conditions that can cause sleep problems.
The surge in sleeping pill use by Americans is the result of hectic lifestyles and advertising that promises the drugs offer safe sleep with minimal side effects. About 10 percent of Americans say they regularly have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep through the night, The Times reported.
In the first 11 months of 2005, drug makers spent $298 million on sleeping pill ads in the United States, more than four times the amount spent in all of 2004.
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Dangerous Chlamydia Strain Spreading in U.S.
A strain of chlamydia that increases the risk of getting or transmitting HIV appears to be slowly spreading among gay and bisexual men in the United States.
LGV chlamydia has caused a dangerous outbreak in Europe but, until recently, was not usually seen in the United States. So far, there have been only 27 confirmed cases in the country, but health experts say this is probably just a fraction of the actual number of infections, since LGV chlamydia is extremely difficult to diagnose, the Miami Herald reported.
Painful symptoms caused by the infection can be mistaken for irritable bowel syndrome and other illnesses and only a few U.S. clinics and laboratories can test for the illness.
In its early stages, LGV doesn't always cause noticeable symptoms. That means an unknown number of people may unknowingly be infected and spread the disease, along with increased risk of HIV transmission, the Herald reported.
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Toxins Found in Newborns' Umbilical Cord Blood
Traces of the Teflon chemical PFOA were found in the umbilical cord blood of 99 percent of 300 newborn babies in a Johns Hopkins study, the Baltimore Sun reported.
PFOA is a suspected cancer-causing agent used in the manufacture of non-stick pans, computer chips, cell phones and numerous other consumer products.
The researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health are now studying whether the presence of PFOA has harmed the infants, possibly by interfering with their thyroid glands and hormone levels, the Sun reported.
"It's very clear that PFOA is being released into the environment, and it's pretty much ubiquitous. But we don't know if it's toxic to people at these levels," said Hopkins researcher Dr. Lynn Goldman.
She and her colleagues are conducting the largest independent research project to study the effects of PFOA on newborns, who may be more vulnerable to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The study is supported by the federal and state governments.
"The fact that PFOA can cross the placenta from the mother to child is very troubling, given the fact that this is a chemical that is broadly toxic and linked to birth defects in lab animals, " Jane Houlihan, vice president at the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C., told the Sun.
